Rude and Not Ginger

I have been dying my hair pretty consistently since I was in middle school. My mom had always dyed hers, and my sister had been putting in highlights for a few years at that point. So when I was about twelve, my mom let me dye part of it temporarily blue. Now, anyone who has ever dyed their hair knows that dark colors on top of dark colors don’t really do much without bleach – so pretty much the only people who knew that my hair was blue were my mom and me. Probably at my sister’s suggestion, I decided to tint the whole thing temporarily red.

Of all the things I did as a pre-teen, that is probably the one that most drastically changed the course of my life.

I looked in the mirror didn’t see an awkwardly pale girl with braces who hadn’t grown into her facial features yet. I didn’t look disdainfully at my mousy brown hair, once a rich chestnut, dulled by puberty and years of treating it like crap.

I saw a superhero.

Well, I saw Mary Jane from Spiderman. But since there aren’t very many great female superheroes to emulate (seriously, what’s up with that?), pre-teen Amanda was happy to be the girlfriend of a caped crusader. Yes I know Spiderman doesn’t wear a cape I needed a new word leave me alone.

Brunette Amanda was awkward, immature, and uncomfortable in social situations. She was struggling with an emerging anxiety disorder, and she was really insecure about how her body looked. She was the worst. But Redhead Amanda – that girl was a rock star. She was fierce as hell and totally loved the fact that she had boobs long before any of her friends. She wasn’t afraid of anything.

Flash forward to a decade or so later, and I’m still shelling out hundreds a year to keep my hair fiery. People always ask me why I dye my hair – sometimes with an air of “but it’s so bad for you”, sometimes with an air of “why would you be voluntarily ginger”, but mostly with an air of “that’s way too much money”.

I always tell people that genetics got it wrong – that my family was supposed to be redheads. Look at us. We’re crazy. We’re feisty. We’re quirky. We’re smart as hell. We have short tempers and big hearts. Those are qualities usually ascribed to redheads, and both my sister and some of my cousins have consistently added reddish tints to their hair throughout the years.

And maybe that’s the truth. Or maybe it’s because I loved that feeling as an awkward girl looking in the mirror to find someone beautiful. Or maybe it’s because, like any good anxious person, I need to exert control over something in times of trouble. And if you look at the timing, I do tend to dye my hair before something that makes me nervous or after something traumatic.

I’ve been going to the same man for almost a year now, and he usually dyes my hair a pretty natural-looking shade of auburn. People are often surprised to hear that I’m not a natural redhead (hello, look at my eyebrows, friends) or tell me that I “look more like myself” when my hair is freshly dyed by my dear Yaniv.

But last week, I think he sensed that I was both anticipating something and overcoming something. We didn’t discuss it – other than him asking me if I wanted a darker, richer shade this time, and I said “No. Keep it bright.”

And bright it is.

I’m trying to liken the current color of my hair to a celebrity or recognizable object, but I can’t seem to think of anything. In some lights, it’s orange. In some lights, it’s red. In all lights, it is at least two tones lighter than my eyebrows. But when Yaniv dried that first strand, I had that feeling again. Redhead Amanda can do anything.

I guess we’re all sociopaths, a little bit. We all get upset when we feel out of control. We all need to do something to channel all of that anxiety and relieve all of that stress. And unlike my good friend Dexter Morgan (THIS SEASON, amiright?!), I don’t have an elaborate kill room ritual. Instead, I dye my hair red. Red like Mary Jane Watson. Red like Amelia Pond. Red like Elastigirl. Red like that crazy fire chick Melisandre. Red like Ginny Weasley. Red like Pippi Longstocking and Anne of Green Gables and Raggedy Ann.

Ah, well. If the temper fits.